• Bankroll Betting Tips
• Bankroll Builder Betting Tips

Whatever amount of cash you decide to bet with starts out as your base bankroll, and ideally serves as the amount of money you are willing to (and can afford to) risk over the course of any given week, month, or year. You can even go down as far as limiting your daily spending, as well as how much cash you lay down on any one bet. Compare odds and offers from the leading bookies. Get the best tips and insight. Place the smartest bets on Oddschecker. Your One Stop Betting Hub.

Horse Betting Bankroll: The winter in the Northeast has been a bit balmy. As I am writing this article it is 62 degrees. Plants are confused and

Horse Betting Bankroll: Tips To Keep Funds In Great Shape

starting to bud and you can hear the groundhogs whistling in the distance. The summer months will be here before we know it. Since you are thinking about shaping up and getting your beach bod back, you should also think about shaping up your bankroll.

Everyone I know that makes their living playing the races keeps their bankroll in shape. Even our friend Rail Guy keeps his bankroll in shape, even though he will also tell you that he is always in beach shape since his body is “built like one of doze Greek gawds or something.’”

Once we get the visual of Rail Guy in his Speedo out of our heads we can focus on shaping up your bankroll. Successful horseplayers treat betting like a business. Successful horseplayers operate like a well-oiled machine.

Horse Betting Bankroll: Top 5 Tips

Keep your Horse Betting Bankroll in perfect shape with these incredibly useful Horse Betting Tips:

Horse Betting Bankroll: #1 Create a Budget

We all have a different financial situation. Only you can determine how much money you are comfortable setting as your bankroll’s starting budget. There are several factors that you should consider when creating your starting budget.

How often do you play the races? Are you like our friend Rail Guy who only plays live racing at Monmouth Park? Or do you simulcast all year from your local OTB?

How much do you usually wager when you are at the track? Are you selective in your wagers and play one or two races or do you play most of the card?

How much available money do you have to commit? Junior’s college fund shouldn’t be tapped for betting.

Have you accounted for the resources you need such as par times or sire data? How about the costs of data files or past performances? Some online wagering providers will provide them for free as long as you bet on the race card that you download.

These are all things you need to consider when setting your starting budget. If you don’t you won’t have a bankroll for very long.

Horse Betting Bankroll: #2 Manage Your Cash

We’ve all seen “that” guy at the track. You know, “that” guy. The one that comes in and drops a ton of money 10 different ways on the first race that has a field of five and manages to miss every bet.

He ups his betting in the second race and has a repeat performance as the only combination he didn’t play comes in. His day and entire bankroll went down the drain in 30 minutes.

Why? He didn’t manage his bankroll.

Don’t be “that” guy.

There is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to managing your bankroll. Some people will use a set wager size for a win bet or limit exotics to an amount based on the number of combinations they are looking to play.

Others will use a percentage-based approach where a specific type of play may be at 1 percent or 2 percent depending on their confidence level.

Regardless of what approach you use, it is most important to have one. Otherwise you’ll be “that” guy and blow through your bankroll faster than Charlie Sheen.

Horse Betting Bankroll: #3 Optimize Your Funds

Maybe you are winning. Maybe you are losing. Could you be doing better with each dollar you are wagering?

Absolutely.

Are you tracking you wagers by type? Are you killing the win bets and losing money on the exactas and trifectas? You need to see what bets you are structuring well, and which bets you are performing poorly with.

It isn’t a matter of what bet types are churning a profit, but with what frequency are you hitting those bets.

If you hit 8 percent of your exactas, but you hit a monster payoff, is this bet really a sustainable wager for you to continue placing regularly?

If you are going to continue playing a low percentage wager, you should “right-size” the wager size so that it doesn’t negatively impact your bankroll in between winning wagers.

Horse Betting Bankroll: #4 Prepare For a Bad Run

The doctor comes into the exam room with a lifeless face and says, “your condition has worsened, I was hoping for the best, but I am sorry to tell you that you have a bad case of seconditis.” He leaves the room as you change out of your hospital gown wondering why he had you put one on in the first place. You know you have a long road to recovery.

All horseplayers hit a bad stretch of wagering at some point, even the professionals. How many times have you been at the track and thought to yourself, “I just can’t pick a winner today?”

Probably more times than not. You need to make sure that your bankroll and wager sizes are sized so that you can survive a rough patch or losing streak without your balance hitting zero.

Think about the worst losing streak you have had and multiply that value by a number around 10. This should give you enough padding to endure a bad run.

Horse Betting Bankroll: #5 Protect Your Cash

Once you have a bankroll you need to protect it. Don’t mix it with your checking or savings accounts. When you do mix it with other accounts it becomes too easy to pull a few extra bucks from one account to another to cover an expense.

Dedicate those dollars. Keep most of it in your online betting account and a reserve in PayPal so you can move money towards expenses like your past performances or data files. You can also use PayPal to move money between betting accounts if one balance is getting too low.

Keep the funds you need for you and your family to live separate from what you wager with.

Like anything, shaping up your bankroll is a living process. There is no approach that works for everyone and you need to figure out what works best for you. You are going to make mistakes and learn from them.

Time for you to start shaping up and remember to avoid running into Rail Guy at the beach, no one wants to help him put sunscreen on his hairy back.

If you’ve been working on keeping your Horse Betting Bankroll in great shape, then it’s time to register for an account here at UsRacing.com, grab your welcome bonus, and get your action!

There are two popular goals when it comes to sports betting. Bettors obviously want to turn a profit, but they also want to be entertained in the process.

These work together, because entertainment aside, you’re going to be enjoying yourself if you’re winning. Whether you like a certain sport or the teams/players associated with it, you’re going to be smiling at the end of the night while you watch a winning bet bring home some fat stacks.

Of course, you’re not always going to win. This is why considering the entertainment aspect is key. That sometimes means not placing wagers on genres that you normally don’t pay attention to, or aren’t going to get excited about.

This isn’t an exact science, and really, it’s just the start to formulating your personal (winning) sports betting strategy. The point is that you want to win and you want to be entertained – ideally both at the same time.

To help make that happen, we’re going to go over several basic sports betting strategies and tips that should make the process a little simpler for the casual sports bettor.

Long-winded intro aside, it is certainly important to be realistic with yourself and decide whether sports betting is purely for fun, purely for profit, or if you think you can handle both.

Making sports betting both entertaining and profitable can be tough, but it is more rewarding when you can wager that way. Regardless, the real reason you want to decide this is so you can gauge how much money you’ll be betting on a regular basis and how seriously you’re going to be taking the entire process.

Odds are that if you’re reading this right now, you care about winning, so we’ll proceed as if profiting takes precedence over being entertained.

2. Bankroll Management

The first step that you as a sports bettor looking to make a profit should follow is to know how much money you have to work with.

Whatever amount of cash you decide to bet with starts out as your base bankroll, and ideally serves as the amount of money you are willing to (and can afford to) risk over the course of any given week, month, or year.

You can even go down as far as limiting your daily spending, as well as how much cash you lay down on any one bet. A great rule of thumb is to never put more than 10% of your allotted bankroll on the line at any given time.

Adhering to these rules can be restrictive and even annoying, but there are going to be bad beats and off nights.

Another good idea beyond choosing your starting bankroll is deciding on a backup bankroll. What happens if you start with $100 and run through it in a week or a month? Do you have the money to go right back in with another $100?

Make sure you know your limits here, and think ahead enough so that you can reload safely if you initially experience a lot of losing. That, or you can go big at first (maybe double it to $200), and be very strict with the percentage you play on a daily and weekly basis.

We touched on this briefly in the bankroll section, but your betting style is going to be pretty key in deciding how you operate as a bettor.

There are several sports betting styles to consider, and also some that you simply want to avoid. Here are the three we’ll go over:

• Kamikaze
• Fixed
• Varied

Kamikaze, the big one to avoid, is simply betting thoughtlessly on any game for any amount at any time.

You want some structure in sports betting. That starts with the amount of money you’re playing with as a whole, but it also extends to each individual bet.

Make sure there is logic behind every bet you target, whether it’s a favorite at home, a player prop bet, or a steep underdog with serious upside. Never place a bet just to bet, and avoid this kamikaze mindset that can quickly ruin your betting experience.

A better angle is the fixed bet, where you know how much you are putting on the line every time out, regardless of wager type. You’re only going to get so much back if you only bet $10 on every single bet, but for each bet, you’re also only losing a maximum of $10.

This is small stakes, but this will get you going in the right direction, and once you start finding success, you can adjust things. That will open the door to fattening up your bankroll, and in turn will allow for bigger bets.

Another method is to vary your betting and bet harder on favorites or “sure things,” and bet a smaller amount of cash on underdogs or wagers that provide big payouts. This contributes to the “grind” theory, where you can keep winning (and keep playing) as long as you’re only assuming so much risk.

It’s true that you can only win (roughly) what you put in, but you can only lose that same amount, too. In reality, if you’re successful, you can turn $10 into $20 in most of your bets, and when you nail the upset picks, you’re tripling or quadrupling your money.

There are more sports betting styles to consider, but these are the three to keep in the back of your mind at all times.

Before you place a single bet, it’s going to be extremely important to know about the sport you’re placing money down on. You should know the sport front and back, whether it be the players, how the game is played, the matchups, trends – the list goes on.

Anyone can win a bet with blind luck, but to win consistently and sustain success, you need to know what you’re doing as a sports fan and as a bettor.

Perhaps you fancy yourself a sports guru and you know a lot about several sports. That may be true, but there are a lot of nuances and changes during each sport’s season. Taking breaks to bet on this sport and then shift to that sport can create unnecessary confusion with how you bet.

There is something to be said about truly having one sport down at an elite level, too. In addition, the idea of finding your betting groove cannot be overstated.

These are very real facets to sports betting, and to win on a regular basis, you should consider both every time you start betting on a specific sport.

Eventually, you can diversify your betting and branch out, but when you first get going, sticking with (and mastering) one betting genre is a great practice. In fact, as fun as betting on every sport can be, once you find the one that brings you profit, it’s not a bad idea to just ride it out with that sport until it’s out of season.

5. Find the Right Site

Before you can ever place bets, you’re going to need to find a place to wager. You have your bankroll, you know how you want to bet and which sport you’re wagering on, but you don’t have your sports betting site decided on yet.

This is actually huge for your entire process, as the right sports betting sites are going to offer a collection of criteria you won’t want to ignore. Here are a few to consider when picking a site to bet at:

• They Pay
• Safe and Reputable
• Good Wagers and Odds
• Great Bonuses and Promotions
• Good Customer Service
• Longevity

Make your personal list if you need to, but for all intents and purposes, this list will do the trick. Rule number one when picking a sports betting site to place wagers at is they need to pay you.

Read reviews, go to gambling forums, or even test the waters yourself with small amounts of money. You wouldn’t blindly put your money into a bank you don’t trust, so don’t do the same with your cash when you plan on betting with it.

Avoid this! Find a collection of sites that you love that are never catching heat for slow payments or failure to pay.

If you can find a site that pays and is also safe and has a good history, all the better. Sites that have been around for a longer period of time tend to have a good reputation and also have stout customer service – two more things you’ll want in your go-to sportsbooks.

Albeit coming in as secondary necessities, you’re also going to want upside with your books. One path to that is finding books that offer really creative and unique wagers, as well as competitive odds. There are some powerhouse sports betting sites out there that are safe and pay you your cash, but they don’t have creative wagers, or they offer weak odds.

Ideally, the perfect site(s) will have a good combination of all of these criteria. The best sports betting sites are called that for a reason.

Bovada, BetOnline, and Bookmaker are some of the best that we’ve come across, but don’t just take our word for it. Get out there and discover which sites meet all of your demands and expectations.

Value was touched on for a second, but this certainly isn’t confined to just which sites offer the most playable wagers.

Once you have picked your favorite sites to wager on, it’s then up to you to hunt out the top value bets every single day across all of your favorite sites.

The trick here is that value is fairly subjective, so you’re only going to know it when you see it. One good idea is to start your day by looking at every site’s opening lines and start gauging where the best value resides.

The easiest way to see the value is to just compare the same exact bet between sites. If Bovada is offering the Patriots as -265 favorites, but BetOnline is giving you that same favorite at -225, it’s obvious which site you should be placing your wager at that day.

Hunting for value isn’t as taxing as it sounds, and it is absolutely necessary if you want to maximize your earnings.

7. Tilt Vacation

We could probably go on and on about sports betting tips to consider, but one of the most important strategies is to not have a strategy at all.

Win or lose, sometimes the best thing you can do when betting on sports is to simply take a break. Those big losses can put you on tilt, which isn’t just a poker or gambling term, but truly an actual feeling.

When on tilt, you’re vulnerable to betting more than you’ve agreed with yourself, or you will look at value and wagers in a biased manner.

Once you get your bearings right again, you’ll be completely refreshed and ready to take on a whole new slate of bets.

This can also be something to think about after a big win. Often when you take down a huge prize, you can feel invincible, or make silly bets because you talk yourself into betting with “free money.”

That’s a dangerous game, as you start working against the betting tendencies that got you into a successful pattern, and you start making obscene bets.

Bankroll Betting Tips

This can have you tricking yourself into seeing value that doesn’t exist or betting more money than you should based on your predetermined bankroll rules. That might not always backfire, but it absolutely can, or at a minimum, it can get you off of your current path and mess up the way your process operates.

Doing so sharpens your focus and keeps everything in perspective.

Bankroll Builder Betting Tips

Following these sports betting strategies and tips don’t guarantee a thing. However, these tips collectively should help you play at safe sites, get the most bang for your buck, and prolong your run as a sports bettor. Whether or not you’re successful at an elite level during that time is up to you.